RAILROADS: Proxy Fight

The 15 directors of the
Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Co. ("Katy") feared that there would be
wigs on the green at the annual stockholders' meeting in St. Louis last
week. Edward N. Claughton, holder of the largest single block of Katy
stock (11%), had loudly voiced his dissatisfaction with the way the
Katy president, natty, gregarious Matthew S. Sloan, was treating his
stockholders.

Claughton's chief complaint: no dividends were paid out of the fat $6.1
million profit earned in 1944. Since 1941, Sloan has poured Katy
earnings back into the system by making $89...